Traditionally, people who used cameras for film photography were at least somewhat concerned about composing photos taken with such cameras to be visually pleasing. Once taken, there was little, if anything, people who did not develop their own film could do to improve their photos. Consequently, a photo that was not visually pleasing when taken generally resulted in a developed photo that also was not visually pleasing.
In digital photography, however, a photo that is not visually pleasing when taken may, through photo processing techniques, result in a visually pleasing (e.g., well-composed) photo. For example, a user with a digital camera may take a photo without being concerned generally about the composition of the photograph, such as whether the photo adheres to any of “the rules” of photography, e.g., rule-of-thirds, balancing elements, leading lines, and the like. Instead, the user may simply capture portions of a scene that they want to ensure are included in a final version of the photo. Given the digital photograph and a photo-editing application, a user may then perform a number of tasks to improve the photo, such as zooming in on a sub region of the photo, adjusting the contrast of the photo, adjusting the brightness of the photo, adjusting the sharpness of the photo, applying a colored or black-and-white filter to the photo, and so on.
One of the most frequently performed tasks in photograph processing is image zooming. Generally, the goal of zooming is to expand a sub region of the image so that it can take the place of the image, e.g., in a viewing window, as a printed photograph, and so on. Consider an example in which an image has a width of six inches a height of four inches. A zooming operation performed relative to such an image may expand a sub region of that image (e.g., one having a width of three inches and a height of two inches) so that the sub region has a width of six inches and a height of four inches. Additionally, the zooming operation may involve removing portions of the image outside this sub region so that just the portion of the image within the sub region remains. Further, the zooming operation may simply cause the sub region to fill a display window previously filled by the entire image. In any case, users who are not familiar with “the rules” of photography, knowing when those rules may be broken, and/or who do not have a good “eye” for capturing a scene, may perform a zooming operation on an image in a way that results in a poorly composed image. Furthermore, manually zooming multiple photos may be time-consuming.